I had arrived a couple of hours back after an overnight bus journey. It had been drizzling as I got down from my bus and walked a kilometer to my hostel through narrow lanes lined by local homes and shops. It is 11 am now and raining heavily. I have been roaming around for the last half hour looking for a place to eat but I don’t see any café or restaurant open. It is not the tourist season. All the Instagram-referred cafes are closed. Except one Vairagi café for the lost vagabond in me. I take shelter under its roof. I go inside and ask the person at the counter with my puppy eyes if they have food. He refrains from patting my head but informs that they indeed have delightful treats for me. I ask for aloo paratha and ginger lemon honey tea. Isn’t that what I came to the hills for. The paratha is bland but it is raining so it doesn’t matter. The rain tells me that this is how my next two days are going to be. No chance to take long, endless walks in the terraced fields or getting lost in the woods. No sunsets to reflect on. Just sitting in one place, having tea with a book on my lap while the rain continues to dance. I try to feel Nanda Kaul’s solitude in the Fire on the Mountain with my tea. Then I wait for the rain to stop. Then I click a few pictures. Then I read again. And I have my tea, watch the rain, wondering yet again where and when will I find my way.

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A two-hour long spell of rain has ended allowing me to take a walk through the village lanes and see the droplets clinging to the flower buds. In a field, I see mules grazing on sumptuous grass. The music of the bells around their necks mingles with the vibrations of the prayer flags fluttering above them and together they become one with the damp mountain breeze. Later, I walk into the Tzering Zhong monastery after reading the ‘Beware of Dogs’ sign on the huge wooden door at the entrance. A taxi driver had earlier warned me of the same. Since when did monks start petting dogs for protection? I walk in pretending to be brave and confident that even if a wolf-sized dog comes charging at me, it will only to give me a big hug. Thankfully, the moment does not come. While I do hear dogs barking, no one has come out to defend their territory. A German Shepherd lounging at the door of a small cabin does not see me as a threat. I wander tentatively through the gardens, and then I climb the steps to the main hall to find it closed. With no one around, I open it stealthily and step inside the silence. I move around, pausing at each of the three golden figures of Buddha, Avalokiteshwara and Maitreya, asking them the same questions and seeking the same answers. I flip through the Pali scriptures lying on a table. A class seems to have finished a while earlier.

I step outside the hall, close the door and sit on the steps. Even though the dogs are barking in the distance, it is as silent outside as it was inside or maybe the noises in my head have subdued. I try to meditate for ten minutes and then I just look at the trees in front of me for a while. A drizzle has started to take shape. It is time to leave. By the time I walk down the steps and walk towards the entrance, the shape has changed to torrential rain. Walking is no longer a possible mode of transport. I need a boat which I don’t have. So, I wait at the entrance feeling the rain. I see the roses dancing, the statues collecting the rain in their pitchers, the drops splashing in the large ceramic pots holding lilies. I see the bearded saint looking at the rain with an unchanged expression throughout. The forces of nature don’t seem to affect him.

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I ask people how to reach Ahju as I want to take the toy train. But the train is not running as a bridge has collapsed in the rain. I should have known. But then I still would have asked. I decide to go to town. At the crossing leading to the Tibetan colony, I ask a dhaba owner about how to reach the town. While making hot phulkas, he tells me a bus might be coming in sometime but the rain has affected timings. A taxi driver sitting there offers to take me in 100 rupees. And as if the local gods are aware of my disdain for spending money on luxury while travelling, a bus arrives to end my uncertainty of decision making. I hop on to it and it takes me to town for just 10 rupees. Beat that driver!

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The air, the path, the trees, the hills are all soaked. Everything seems a bit blurred and merged into a oneness where it was difficult to distinguish where the path ended and the hills started to rise or where the human form became one with the trees. I walk through that haze, opening and closing my umbrella depending on the swinging moods of the clouds. In that haze, among the lively greens, I stop at a tree with its craggy branches shorn of vitality but asking for one more chance at life. In the gloomy mist, without time on its side, its desire gave the tree a ghostly look. Walking further up, I pass an old man as wrinkled as the trees we met under. I ask him if I am on the right path to Gunehar. He tells me that I am and it is just a little further away. I was quite sure that he would have given me the same answer had I met him at the beginning of my hike to keep me hopeful. Closer to the village, I see a big furry dog climbing all over a girl to hug her. Undoubtedly her lover from another life, he just wouldn’t let go of her. But the girl has to go. After a lot of hugging and patting, the dog accepts that his love will remain unfulfilled in this life too.

On reaching the village, I buy a chocolate at a shop and ask the owner about the waterfall. He tells me the way but strongly advises against going there because of the weather. There are serious risks with the wet, slippery path and strong flow of the water with no one around to save me if it comes to it. I take his advice, walk further up in the village but then I take a diversion downhill to wherever it was going. My shoes get wet crossing a tiny stream flowing on the path. At one point, diverging from the main path, I take a moss-covered trail into the woods. The spider webs on the tree trunks are sagging with their dampness and the rain drops tantalizingly hang on to the leaves for me to capture them just in time. Walking on that slippery trail through the woods amidst the music of the water flowing through it, I too felt like turning into a species thriving with life in the mountain rain and becoming one with the mist enveloping the trees. The trail merges with the main path somewhere and walking down I reach a point where in the distance, I see water flowing down the slopes and disappearing somewhere below. A woman carrying a large bunch of wild grass on her head walks up near me. She unloads the grass and keeps them under a rock with similar other bunches of grass. Feed for the cows, she tells me. It was getting dark or maybe the mist, clouds, the greens and dampness had just dimmed my vision. I turn for the walk back to town before I become blind.

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While waiting for my lunch at the Nyingma restaurant, I remove my wet shoes to find five leeches gleefully sucking my feet at various places while one was up my calf. So much for my walk in the woods. I remove them from my feet and check my shoes for other miscreants. The waiter picks up the suckers fallen off my feet in a piece of paper and takes them out. The chicken momos arrive as I wipe the blood of my feet. It is raining again. In the far corner, I see a pile of books at the rain stained window, and a cat curled up in a wicker sofa. I go up to her to have a closer look. She looks at me doubtfully but then closes her eyes ignoring my insignificance. I take a few pictures of her seemingly blissful mood.

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On my last afternoon, I have a barbecue chicken sandwich in Mafia Café where Vito Corleone, Rocky and Indiana Jones adorn the walls. I ask for a lemon honey tea but not sure of how lemony I wanted my tea, they serve me honey tea with three pieces of cut lemon on the side. I try not to smirk at them. Finishing my food, I walk to the wide expanse of a lush green meadow which they also call as the landing site. But it is not the season for landings. The clouds in the sky are heavy but the setting sun still finds a way to shine amidst them. I try to capture the arc of light stretching from the ground to somewhere behind the hills but my incompetent camera cannot do justice to what my eyes see. The grass looks deliciously green with droplets of the last rain resting on their glistening tips. No wonder the cows are feasting like there is no tomorrow. A couple thinking of me as a tourist photographer ask if I can make a picture of their eternal love in these hills. I oblige. They pose with their arms around each other’s waists. The girl wants another one while they look into each other’s eyes. She leans into the boy and like the clouds eager to rain anytime, she almost kisses him on the lips. The boy looks at me embarrassed. I control my grin and return an assuring smile that no one will ever know. And so love danced in the hills as the day gradually dissolves into the evening. A woman shares a roasted corn on the cob with her kid, while a man with an umbrella waits in the field for his cow to finish her feast, so he can go home.

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So, I went to this small hill town of Bir in the state of Himachal Pradesh in northern India during the rains.